Historical people in type

Baskerville, John	(1706 – 1775) English writing master, stonecutter, letter designer, typefounder and printer born in 1706. Although in his lifetime he was underappreciated compared with his close contemporary William Caslon, he is now recognized as the other half of the duo that transformed English printing and type founding. After first working as an accomplished writing master and headstone engraver in Birmingham, he found business success japanning (coating with black varnish) trays and snuff-boxes. With capital from this, in 1750 he set up a printing business, hiring John Handy as punchcutter. His quest for perfection meant his first complete book took until 1757 to produce, during which time he made major innovations in press construction (making a flatter, sturdier bed), printing ink (blacker, more even, and quicker-drying), papermaking (wove instead of laid), and of course letter design (which Handy cut to Baskerville’s designs). The result was a brilliant series of original typefaces and splendid books appearing from 1754 to 1775. Baskerville lost a great deal of money in his printing ventures, and at one point asked for a government subsidy while he was printing his masterpiece, a Bible for the University of Cambridge. The perfection of his work seems to have unsettled his compatriot printers, and some claimed his printing damaged the eyes! Abroad, however, he was much admired, notably by Fournier, Bodoni (who intended at one point to come to England to work under him), and Benjamin Franklin. The modern revival of Baskerville’s designs began in the 1920s, thanks to the work of Bruce Rogers, and soon the major foundries all had their own Baskervilles.
Belwe, Georg	(1878 – 1954) German typographer, type designer and teacher. After studying in Berlin, in 1900, with F.H. Ehmcke and F.W. Kleukens, he set up the Steglitzer Werkstatt. He taught at the Kunstgewerbschule in Berlin, and headed the typography department at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Design and Book Arts. Designed typeface Belwe.
Bembo. Pietro	(1470 – 1547) Italian classical scholar, friend of Lucrezia Borgia and many leading figures of the day. He regularized the Italian language itself by publishing grammars. He was made cardinal in 1539. Monotype gave his name to their typeface Bembo of 1929. The design is based on type cut by Francesco Griffo for the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius, and first used in Bembo’s work De Aetna in 1495/96.
Benguiat, Edward	(1927 – ) Prolific New York type designer and accomplished lettering artist, associated with Photo-Lettering and ITC, influential in the revival of Art Nouveau typefaces. In 1989 he was awarded the TDC Medal, the award from the Type Directors Club presented to those “who have made significant contributions to the life, art, and craft of typography”. Designer of typefaces like ITC Typewriter, Bauhaus, Avant Garde, Korinna, and Benguiat.
Bodoni, Giambattista	(1740 – 1813) Italian punchcutter, typefounder and printer of Parma, admirer of Baskerville. He led in the development of the letterform we call ‘modern’ or ‘didone’ , in the last years of the eighteenth century.
Braille, Louis	(1809 – 1852) French inventor of the Braille writing system for the blind. Until the early 1800s raised letters had been used, which were very difficult to distinguish. In 1821 a soldier presented a new system to the school for the blind that Louis Braille attended (he was blind from age four). The soldier, Charles Barbier, had devised a writing system of raised dots intended for use in military communication at night, but the army had rejected it. The young Braille realized how useful the idea would be for the blind, if simplified. After years of experimentation he arrived at the ideal, still current, of an array of 6 dots: 2 wide by 3 high. The first Braille book was published in 1827. Unfortunately the inventor did not live to see the success of his system; it was an Englishman, Dr. Thomas Armitage (1824-1890) and founder of the RNIB, who secured that. Braille is now almost universal for writing for the blind.
Carter, Matthew	(1937 – ) English type designer, punchcutter and scholar, working primarily in Europe and the USA. His text faces include Auriga, Charter and Galliard; his tilting faces include Manitinia and Sophia.
Caslon (I), William	(1692 – 1766) English engraver, punchcutter and typefounder; author of many Baroque romans, italics, Greeks and other non-Latin faces. ATF Caslon, Monotype Caslon, and Carol Twombly’s Adobe Caslon are closely based on his work. A collection of punches is now in the St Bride Printing Library, London.
Caxton, William	(1422 – 1491) The first English printer. Printed the first printed book in English to make extensive use of woodcuts. Published such major works as Troilus and Creseide, Morte d’Arthur, The History of Reynart the Foxe, and The Canterbury Tales. Over the course of 14 years, he printed more than 70 books, 20 of them his own translations from the Latin, French, and Dutch. The typefaces used by Caxton were all varieties of “black letter” or “gothic” type. His earlier works were set in an early form of French lettre b&acirctarde. By 1490, he had acquired a more round and open typeface, a textura originally used by the Parisian printer Antoine Verard and later favored by Caxton’s successor, Wynkyn de Worde.
Chappell, Warren	(1904 – 1991) American designer and scholar, trained in Germany, where he studied with Rudolf Koch. His typefaces include Trajanus, Lydian and the still unmanufactured Eichenauer.
Colines, Simon De	(1480 – 1547) French typecutter, master typographer and printer. Author of a dozen or more roman fonts, several italics, several blackletters and a fine cursive Greek. Colines as much as any single person appears to be responsible for creating the typographic style of the French golden age. Garamond’s romans derive directly from Coline’s, though his italics are quite different. None of Coline’s faces has evidently yet been translated to digital form.
De Vinne, Theodore Low	(1828 – 1914), U.S. printer, born in Stamford, Conn. fought for simplified typefaces; designed Renner type; helped design Century Roman; De Vinne type named for him; wrote 8 books on printing.
Didot, Francois-Ambroise	(1730 – 1804) Parisian printer and publisher. Designer of several Neoclassical romans and italics, cut under his supervision by Pierre-Louis Vafflard. Father of Firmin Didot and founder of the Didot dynasty in printing and typography.
Didot, Firmin	(1764 – 1836) Parisian printer and punchcutter; son of F.A. Didot and student of Pierre-Louis Vafflard; father of Ambroise Firmin-Didot. Author of several Neoclassical faces as well as the Romantic fonts for which he is posthumously known. Monotype Didot and Linotype’s digital Didot (drawn by Adrian Frutiger) are based on his work.
Diesel, Chank	(1969 – ) Minneapolis resident Chank describes himself thusly: traveling font salesman, rockstar (or at least he talks to rockstars), founding member of the Chank Army, the World’s Most Famous Alphabetician. He also paints cats, Blue Boys, cars and monkeys. (“i paint on cars. i don’t paint on monkeys. they hate that,” he adds helpfully, in lowercase.)
Does, Bram De	(1934 – ) Dutch typographer, formerly chief designer at Joh. Enschede en Zonen, Haarlem. Designer of the Trinite and Lexicon families.
Dombrezian, Peter	(19?? – ) American lettering designer associated with ATF after the Second World War. Created of Dom typeface.
Dwiggins, William Addison	(1880 – 1956) American designer and typographer. Dwiggins designed typefaces exclusively for the Linotype machine. In the 1930s and 1940s, he also created the typographic house style as Alfred Knopf, New York. His serifed faces include Caledonia, Eldorado, Electra and Falcon. His only completed san-serif if Metro. His uncial is Winchester. Many of his type drawings are now in the Boston Public Library.
Fairbank, Alfred	(1895 – 1982) English calligrapher and designer of the Fairbank itali
Firmint-Didot, Ambroise	(1790 – 1876) French scholar, typecutter and printer. He was the son of Firmin Didot (whose full name he took as his own surname) and grandson of Francois-Ambroise Didot. Author of the Didot Greek fonts.
Fleischman, Johann Michael	(1701 – 1768) German immigrant to the Netherlands. A prolific and skilled cutter of romans, italics and ornamental blackletters. Also the author of several Arabic and Greek fonts. Fleischman’s early romans and italics are Baroque, but in the 1730s he cut a series of text fonts idiosyncratic and self-concious enough to be called Rococo. Most of his surviving material is now at the Enschede Museum in Haarlem.
Forsberg, Karl-Erik	(1914 – ) Swedish calligrapher and typographer. Designer of the Berling text roman. His titling faces include Carolus, Ericus and Lunda.
Fournier, Pierre Simon	(1712 – 1768) French printer and punchcutter. Author of many French Neoclassical fonts and typographic ornaments. Nearly all of his original material has been damaged or lost. Monotype Fournier and Barbou are based on his work, and W.A. Dwiggins’s Electra owes much to the study of it.
Frutiger, Adrian	(1928 – ) Swiss immigrant to France. A prolific and versatile designer of type. His serifed faces include Apollo, Breughel, Glypha, Iridium and Meridien. His sans serifs include Avenir, Frutiger and Univers. His titling and script types include Herculanum, Ondine, Pompeijiana and Rustican.
Garamond, Claude	(1490 – 1561) French punchcutter, working chiefly at Paris. Author of many Roman fonts, at least two italics, and a full set of chancery Greeks. His surviving punches and mateices are now at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp and at the Imprimerie Nationale, Paris. Stempel Garamond roman and italic, Linotype Granjon roman, Gunter Gerhard Lange’s Berthold Garamond roman, Robert Slimbach’s Adobe Garamond roman and Ronald Arnhol’s Legacy italic are all based on his designs. Monotype Garamond is not.
Gill, Eric	(1882 – 1940) English engraver and stonecutter, working in England and Wales. His serifed faces include Joanna, Perpetua, and Pilgrim. His one unserifed face is Gill Sans. Perpetua Greek is also his, but Gill Sans Greek is by other hands. Gill’s type drawings are now in the St Bride Library, London. Some of his matrices and punches are at the University Library, Cambridge; others in the Clark Library, Los Angeles - but none of these punches were cut by Gill himself.
Goudy, Frederic	(1865 – 1947) American type designer and founder. His serfied faces include University of California Old Style (later adapted for machine composition as Californian), Deepdene, Italian Old Style, Kaatskill, Kennerley, Village No. 1 and Village No. 2. His balackletters include Franciscan, Goudy Text and Goudy Thirty. His titling faces include Forum, GOudy Old Style and Hadriano. Goudy Sans is his only unserifed face. His only uncial is Friar. Most of Goudy’s original material was destroyed by fire in 1939. What survives is at the Rochester Institute of Technology
Granjon, Robert	(1513 – 1590) French typecutter working at Paris, Lyon, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Rome. Author of many Renaissance and Mannerist romans, italics, scripts, several Greeks, a Cyrillic, some Hebrews, and the first successful fonts of Arabic type. Some of his punches and matrices survive at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp and Nordiska Museet, Stockholm. Matthew Carter’s Galliard is based primarily on Granjon’s Ascendonica roman and itali
Griffo, Francesco	(1459 – 1518) Bolognese punchcutter, working in Venice, Bologna and elsewhere in Italy. Author of at least seven romans, three italics, four Greeks and a Hebrew. None of Grifo’s actual punches or matrices are known to survive, and the house of Aldus Manutius in Venice, where he did most of his work, has vanished. (The site is now occupied by a bank.) Griffo’s letterforms have nonetheless been patiently reconstructed from the printed books in which his type appears. Giovanni Madersteigs’s Griffo type is an exacting replica of one of Griffo’s fonts. Monotype Bembo roman is based more loosely on the same font. Monotype poliphilus is a rough reproduction of another. Mardersteig’s Dante roman and italic are also based on a close study of Griffo’s work. The italics, overall, have received far less attention than the romans.
Guillen De Brocar, Amaldo	(1460 – 1524) Spanish printer and typographer working at Alcala de Henares, near Madrid. Author of several romans and at least two Greek fonts, notably the Complutensian Greek type of 1510.
Gutenberg, Johannes	(1394 – 1468) Generally regarded as the inventor of printing, in Mainz, Germany, in the 1440s. In fact it is likely his actual invention was limited to the brass moulds and matrices to produce lead type accurately in large quantities. (Laurens Koster in Haarlem probably made moveable type somewhat earlier.) Gutenberg brought together many existing technologies in the form of the screw press, wood-engraving, and punchcutting already used in many aspects of metal-working. His mission, like all the very early printers, was to emulate the writing of contemporary scribes. In 1449 he borrowed 800 guilders from a lawyer, Johann Fust, but had to borrow the same sum again in 1452 to continue with his preparations, whereupon Fust became a business partner. Gutenberg’s great work, the 42-line Bible (the number of lines per page) was completed around 1455. At this point Fust was still owed money, and it seems he effectively made Gutenberg bankrupt by foreclosing on the debt. He took over the business, removed Gutenberg, but kept on the foreman Peter Schoeffer as his partner. Together they went on to produce several fine works, and Mainz became known throughout Europe as the origin of printing.
Hammer, Victor	(1882 – 1967) Austrian immigrant to the USA. All of Hammer’s types are uncials. These include American Uncial, Andromache, Hammer Uncial, Pindar and Samson. His type drawings and punches are now at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Holmes, Kris	(1950 – ) American calligrapher. Designer of Isadora and Sierra; codesigner with Janice Fishman of Shanno, and with Charles Bigelow of the Lucida family.
Manutius, Aldus	(1449 – 1515) Venetian scholar, who became a publisher and printer when he founded the Aldine Press in 1495. He introduced personal or pocket editions of the classics in Latin and Greek that all could own, as well as works by contemporaries Pietro Bembo and Erasmus. His typefaces were all designed and cut by the brilliant Francesco Griffo, a punchcutter who created the first roman type cut from study of classical Roman capitals. Type designs based on work used by Aldus Manutius include Bembo and Poliphilus.
Morrison, Stanley	(1889 – 1967) English typographer, scholar, and historian of printing, born in Wanstead, Essex; particularly remembered for his design of Times New Roman, which first appeared in print in 1932 in London’s The Times, later called the most successful new typeface of the first half of the 20th century; typographic adviser to Monotype Corp. (1923) and Cambridge Univ. Press (1923-59); editor of The Fleuron, an influential typographic journal (1926-30); author of Four Centuries of Fine Printing (1924), and First Principles of Typography (1936).
Stempel	D. Stempel AG, the last major typefoundry to operate in Germany. It was founded in Frankfurt in 1895 and acquired punches and matrices from many other German foundries as they closed. The Stempel Foundry ceased commercial operation in 1985. A museum andnoncommercial foundry has now been formed from the old core.
Segura, Carlos	(19?? – ) Founder of Segura Inc. design firm, The [T-26] Digital Type Foundry, and Thickface Records.
Tschichold, Jan	(1902 – 1974) Leading German typographer active through the middle of this century, practitioner of both modern and classical designs. Tschichold had been expected to follow in the carreer of his father, a letter-painter. But he was exposed to typography at the Leipzig Akademie, where he studied under the type designer Walter Tiemann. His enthusiasm for avant-garde design was sparked by a visit to the 1924 Bauhaus exhibition. In 1928, he published Die neue Typographie, in which he advocated the use of sans serif typefaces and assymetric layout. By 1935, however, he had reconsidered many of his earlier positions, calling, in his Typographische Gestaltung, for a more traditional, formal approach to typographic design. He also became known for his study of medieval page proportions, and advocacy of the golden section. After the Second World War, Tschichold moved to England, where he single-handedly redesigned the entire Penguin paperback library, probably the first application of fine typography to the paperback book, and certainly (at over six hundred volumes) one of the most ambitious design projects in the history of type. In 1960, Tschichold was commissioned by the firms of Monotype, Linotype, and Stempel to create a classical typeface that could be produced with no variations for the Monotype and the Linotype typesetting machines, and also for hand-setting. He named the result Sabon, which has since been adapted for phototypesetting systems, and continues to grow in popularity, particularly in Europe.
Alcuin of York	(735 – 804) Abbot of St. Martin’s at Tours, headed the scriptorium of Charlemagne. Developed the Carolingian minuscule, a clear script which has become the basis of the way the letters of the present Roman alphabet are written. Also contributed to a system of punctuation and divisions of text into sentences and paragraphs.